For sure, my parents and upbringing shape me, as do my faith and education experiences, but there is another force just as important. Books. I have always been a reader - if my mother had ever really wanted to punish me, she would have grounded me from reading. I remember devouring everything from all of Beverly Cleary's books to Laura Ingalls Wilder, Lousia May Alcott, LM Montgomery. As I grew, my mother made sure I was exposed to all the classics. I remember reading everything from historic fiction to Mary Higgins Clark mysteries. I am still this way, though somewhat pickier - I have little time to read so if I find myself fifty pages in and bored, I have no compunction about tossing it aside and picking up something new.
These books I grew up were often fluff, but they also often were meat. I think the first book that I was conscious of being shaped by was Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. Later, I know some fiction and non-fiction about the Jewish Holocaust left its Mark, but as a young teen, I think To Kill A Mockingbird was the most important book I read. Since then, I have no idea how many times I have read it . . . but enough that I can quote passages. Every time I read it, I love it a little more than before, I find new depths, new poetry, new truths about life.
Sunday, Jack spent the day with his dad at the hospital and I am sure was tired, but while getting his dad prescriptions filled at the CVs, he saw this month's copy of Life with Gregory Peck reading Mockingbird, and despite being tired, he bought it for me. I made it to the second page before I was crying. Of all books I have always wanted to teach, mockingbird is at the top of the list, yet I really have not had the chance. At Comanche, it was a sophomore book while I taught freshmen, and at Elgin it is a freshman book while I teach sophomores - (thankfully, I always get my dose of Gatsby with my Juniors). From a literary standpoint, the book is just so teachable, but really, I wanted to make someone fall just as in love with Lee's words as I was. This book. It is just so full of hard truths and beautiful truths, of innocence and love, all tempered by the evils of the world as seen through the eyes of a my favorite narrator of all time. I am always right there with Scout and Jem and Dill as they sneak into the Radley's porch, while they sit with the reverend in the balcony as Atticus tries to do the impossible, with Scout as she walks with her hand tucked in Arthur's arm. I still haven't made it all the way through the magazine - I have to read every caption, examine every photo, put the lines down for awhile when tears blur the words, ponder over Lee's passages again. I am savoring.
To be sure, it affects the way I see classrooms with the inevitable Burris Ewells and the Walter Cunninghams and occasionally, even a Scout Finch. I have not actually seen first hand much discrimination of race, but I have certainly seen it concerning socio-economic status and sex and Although the problems with race still abound, they have been subtle around me. It affects the way I see the world and people around me, for all those characters are indeed in our world, the many Miss Stephanies and a few Miss Maudies, the rare Atticus. They are all here if we look - we even see Dill under the collards. There are rabid dogs and monsters to fight, though they may not be monsters in the flesh. The narrowness of lives and minds still abounds.
Mockingbird does not stand alone. Before I left highschool, I had discovered Michener and more importantly, Leon Uris with his books of Ireland and then Exodus, perhaps the most influential book of my highschool life. Later, I found Thoreau and Emerson and Houseman and Yeats and even Kingsolver and Quindlen and Moyes and so many, many others. So many wonderful, hard books. Even just a few years ago we were blessed with The Help. But I often wonder if that novel and so many other modern books would have been what they are without Harper Lee's words that dared to make people question, that dared to step on toes.
Thank you to all those authors who so bravely committed their immortal words to paper.
Sunday, Jack spent the day with his dad at the hospital and I am sure was tired, but while getting his dad prescriptions filled at the CVs, he saw this month's copy of Life with Gregory Peck reading Mockingbird, and despite being tired, he bought it for me. I made it to the second page before I was crying. Of all books I have always wanted to teach, mockingbird is at the top of the list, yet I really have not had the chance. At Comanche, it was a sophomore book while I taught freshmen, and at Elgin it is a freshman book while I teach sophomores - (thankfully, I always get my dose of Gatsby with my Juniors). From a literary standpoint, the book is just so teachable, but really, I wanted to make someone fall just as in love with Lee's words as I was. This book. It is just so full of hard truths and beautiful truths, of innocence and love, all tempered by the evils of the world as seen through the eyes of a my favorite narrator of all time. I am always right there with Scout and Jem and Dill as they sneak into the Radley's porch, while they sit with the reverend in the balcony as Atticus tries to do the impossible, with Scout as she walks with her hand tucked in Arthur's arm. I still haven't made it all the way through the magazine - I have to read every caption, examine every photo, put the lines down for awhile when tears blur the words, ponder over Lee's passages again. I am savoring.
To be sure, it affects the way I see classrooms with the inevitable Burris Ewells and the Walter Cunninghams and occasionally, even a Scout Finch. I have not actually seen first hand much discrimination of race, but I have certainly seen it concerning socio-economic status and sex and Although the problems with race still abound, they have been subtle around me. It affects the way I see the world and people around me, for all those characters are indeed in our world, the many Miss Stephanies and a few Miss Maudies, the rare Atticus. They are all here if we look - we even see Dill under the collards. There are rabid dogs and monsters to fight, though they may not be monsters in the flesh. The narrowness of lives and minds still abounds.
Mockingbird does not stand alone. Before I left highschool, I had discovered Michener and more importantly, Leon Uris with his books of Ireland and then Exodus, perhaps the most influential book of my highschool life. Later, I found Thoreau and Emerson and Houseman and Yeats and even Kingsolver and Quindlen and Moyes and so many, many others. So many wonderful, hard books. Even just a few years ago we were blessed with The Help. But I often wonder if that novel and so many other modern books would have been what they are without Harper Lee's words that dared to make people question, that dared to step on toes.
Thank you to all those authors who so bravely committed their immortal words to paper.
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